A single Ansible run can take a blank VPS to a hardened, reproducible server. The hard part is not the tasks, it is the order. Here is the ordering that keeps you logged in, the failures that pass green and bite two weeks later, and how to make the second run as safe as the first.
You set PasswordAuthentication no, restarted SSH, and moved on. Months later the logs show successful password logins, because a vendor drop-in file sorted earlier and won. A VPS setup and hardening checklist where every step comes with the command that proves it worked.
A deploy key in GitHub secrets is a shell on your production server, handed to a container you don't control, running code from maintainers you've never met. Here's how to build the pipeline so a leaked key isn't worth much: forced commands, scoped sudo, pinned actions and a real approval gate.